Apple Hasn’t Updated Its US Government Transparency Report Since June 2023, 20 Months Ago

Apple:

Apple is committed to being transparent about government requests for customer data and how we respond. We publish a Transparency Report twice a year disclosing the number of government requests for customer data Apple receives globally.

Apple’s most recent report for the United States covers January to June 2023. They didn’t always lag this far behind. In November 2021 they issued the report for the second half of 2020, so that report came out 11 months after the period it covered. In September 2023 they issued the report covering January to June 2022, 15 months after the period covered. For all I know, they’ll come out with the report for the second half of 2023 sometime this month, continuing to lag 15 months behind the reporting periods. But if that’s the standard schedule for publishing these reports, they should say so. We should know when to expect them.

I don’t think there’s anything worrisome or fishy going on here, but given the recent brouhaha over the UK’s secret gag order demand for Apple to build a backdoor into iCloud Advanced Data Protection, along with the Biden administration’s shameful downplaying of that demand, it has me looking as much at what Apple doesn’t say about government data demands as what Apple does say about them.

★ Tuesday, 4 March 2025